Get ready for vibrant colours, bold shapes, and a merch drop all about friendship. This month, artist Matt Willey collabed with Eval (11) from the SDN 001 Mentarang school in Indonesia. Matt is an award-winning graphic designer who has worked with companies like The Independent and The New York Times Magazine. He also designed the title graphics of the British television series ‘Killing Eve’. For this merch drop, Matt and Eval created a joyful and playful illustration all about friendship.
Helping people through design
While Matt is a well-established name in the design world, he confesses that graduating from Central Saint Martins with a degree in graphic design almost felt accidental. His love for the craft is connected to his passion for creating interesting and functional things.
“I liked that it's problem-solving, but creative problem-solving,” he explains. “There are constraints: a brief, a budget, a deadline, and you have to figure something out within those limitations. The utility of it made sense to me. You're making things that people use, or engage with, things that serve a purpose.”
And this approach to design clearly works. That creative, problem-solving attitude won the attention of countless brands that were only too excited to work with him.
Matt has an especially long list of editorial projects on his portfolio: “Redesigning The Independent newspaper was exciting. I've redesigned The New York Times Magazine twice, and The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books. They all felt like dream projects in some way.”
The Matt Willey x Eval collab is out now!
But when it comes to his favourite project, Matt struggles to come up with just one answer. “I really enjoy the variation,” he clarifies, “projects where I'm slightly out of my depth, where I don't know what I'm doing, where I have to learn.”
“I've just designed a bicycle frame, I designed some furniture out of concrete for Huguet. I loved the challenge of scale when designing stamps for the United Nations. None of these are things I'd done before.”
Matt has not only worked with big brands, but has also won several awards. He admits that he’s always a bit suspicious of awards, but in the end he adds: “It's recency bias I suspect, and I think I only thought about this in retrospect, but the National Design Award from Cooper Hewitt felt more significant. Perhaps because it's concerned with a body of work rather than a single project. It's less about one clever idea and more about a sustained practice, which maybe feels more meaningful to me.”
Fighting cancer with typefaces
One of Matt’s most prominent works is his title graphic for the British television series ‘Killing Eve’. For this project, he designed a brand new typeface. When discussing this part of his work process, he says: “Often an existing typeface is exactly right and there's no reason to draw something new. But sometimes I have a specific feeling about how the type should work and I can get to that idea more easily by drawing it. And I enjoy it, it’s fun!”
He goes on to explain that it started out with drawing typefaces for smaller magazines because he liked having control over the letters and the space.
“I tend to start by sketching — either on paper or digitally. It's instinctive rather than systematic. I've had a lot of help and support from proper type designers along the way; Diana Overzea and Henrik Kubel in particular. On many projects Diana has taken what I've started and built it out into a fully functioning, working typeface.”
Besides making fantastic typefaces for editorial and film projects, Matt uses his creativity to fund cancer research. Several of his typefaces are commercially available and the proceeds go to Cancer Research UK and MacMillan Cancer Support.
Matt recounts: “More than 10 years ago I got into a conversation with the designer Paul Harpin, who started an initiative called Buy Fonts Save Lives. Paul set up BFSL because his niece Laura died of cancer, aged just 26. It's a very simple idea: sell typefaces to raise money for cancer charities.”
This initiative immediately hit home for him. “I wanted to help. Cancer is shit. I lost my dad to cancer.”
So, what did Matt do? “I tidied up two of my typefaces — Timmons and MFred — (with a lot of help from Henrik Kubel) and donated them to Paul's initiative.” Matt now has 7 typefaces commercially available and has raised over £150,000 for cancer research.
Working with Indonesian children and unleashing their creativity
As the conversation shifts towards children’s creativity, Matt says: “I spend a lot of time overthinking things, worrying about whether an idea is right, or good enough, or clever enough.
“Children don't need permission or validation in the same way, they trust their instincts. And they're not paralysed by trying to make it perfect. They can be unprecious about it. They'll make something, show you, and move on to the next thing. The output is instinctive, impulsive even, and not bogged down in or dulled by refinement or polish.”
Given Matt’s incredible designs and passion for charitable work, we were ecstatic to hear he was up for a collab. He exclaims: “I was really excited! It's a lovely idea and not something I'd done before. I’m always interested in doing things that feel new or where you might learn something. I'm not sure what I was expecting exactly, I just remember being really curious.”
Getting to the core of friendship
For this illustration, Matt was partnered with 11-year-old Eval. Eval was given the theme of ‘friendship’ for his drawing. When we talked with him about the theme, Eval emphasised that friends shouldn’t bully each other or be arrogant. Instead, they should be supportive and helpful towards each other.
When hearing Eval’s take, Matt immediately agrees: “I think the best way to be supportive is to pay attention, to notice when someone's struggling or withdrawn, and to check in with them. Sometimes people don't ask for help directly, so you need to create space for them to talk if they want to.”
For Matt, one word sticks out when the topic of friendship comes up: empathy. “I guess friends — good friends — are people you can be yourself around without pretense. Not having to perform or present some version of yourself.”
When it came time to draw, Eval depicted two friends playing together in the forest. When he talked to us about it, he emphasised the importance of not getting angry when someone makes mistakes and of always being friendly.
Matt’s response to Eval’s take is overwhelmingly positive: “I think Eval's drawing shows friendship as something active and joyful; friends doing things together, exploring, having adventures.
“There's also something about the scale of it, the way children experience the world as bigger and more open than adults do. And I loved how prominent the sun is in his drawing. There's something beautiful and optimistic about its scale. Friendship is something warm and life-giving, not complicated or fraught. It's uncomplicated joy, really.”
Putting friendship on a T-shirt
Even though Matt has extensive experience in graphic design, he admits that this project was challenging for him.
“It was really difficult! I loved Eval's drawing, and honestly you could have just put that on a T-shirt and it would have been great.
“In the end I decided that I wanted to focus on the two figures — the two friends — playing football together. That's the human moment. I adore how they are rendered, there's a gloriously human wobbliness to them! Eval wrote ‘My best friend’ close by, almost as a caption.”
Matt then goes on to explain that he preserved the sun in the geometric shape of his final design. “The circle and the heart shape are simple graphic devices. The circle represents the oversized sun in the drawing. It represents warmth, happiness, and positivity.
“Below that, you have two friends secure within their friendship, held together by the heart shape; a symbol of love and affection.”
The result — a vibrant and warm illustration that preserves a piece of both artists.
At the end of this experience, Matt excitedly tells us that he loved working on this project. “It's been wonderful. I learnt a lot. I feel very honoured to have been paired up with Eval and to have such a wonderful drawing as a starting point.”
The Matt Willey x Eval collab is out now!